CES Goes Hollywood in Las Vegas

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And it can't hurt that Sony has a library of 150,000 episodes of TV shows and more than 4,000 films (including some pretty hot shows such as Seinfeld and Wheel of Fortune) as folks begin to warm to ordering content from the Web.

Comcast starts with a ready-made audience—the nearly 25 million pairs of eyeballs its cable system reaches each day. Roberts, who admitted during his keynote address that the cable industry has been an outsider at the consumer electronics party, used his speech to shove Comcast into the forefront of the convergence (combining the TV set and the computer). And he has tons of content connections—namely because he pays Hollywood studios zillions of dollars for their movies, TV channels, and the like.

Convergence of the Conchords

Now he's flashing it to the CES crowd, some of whom were interviewed by Seacrest from their seats during his keynote presentation and displayed slack-jawed amazement at Comcast's announcement that it would soon offer an amazingly fast "wideband" connection that can download high-definition movies in minutes rather than hours. While Jobs is getting ready to pitch his second stab at offering movies on iPods and Apple TV, Roberts unveils deals to offer 6,000 movies a month to consumers to watch on the tube through video-on-demand—basically a "take that" to the bearded Apple CEO.

Clearly, some of the older media players were feeling their oats at this year's CES—none more so, it seems, than Roberts, who even played the Ed Sullivan role late in his own keynote address, introducing the New Zealand folk duo Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie. The duo, who star in the offbeat HBO comedy series Flight of the Conchords, got some yucks by poking fun at themselves and the whole notion of convergence. (McKenzie displayed his version of convergence, a camera taped to a cell phone, to the laughing throng.) I couldn't tell if Roberts was giggling, too, but for once it seemed that he and the rest of the folks at Sony were having a ball of their own at this annual gathering of geeks.

Grover is Los Angeles bureau chief for BusinessWeek.